


You Must Endure

by Halfblood_Fiend



Series: Inquisitor Trey Lavellan [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Dalish Herald, Dalish Origin, Flashbacks, Herald of Andrade Conflict, Internal Conflict, M/M, long walks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-26
Updated: 2015-05-26
Packaged: 2018-04-01 11:37:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4018300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Halfblood_Fiend/pseuds/Halfblood_Fiend
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Trey Lavellan takes a moment to sort his whirlwind of thoughts after being called the Herald of Andraste.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Must Endure

**Author's Note:**

> This is an expansion on being a Dalish Herald and the conflicts I feel are glossed over by the introduction of that title.

The Herald of Andraste.

He swore loudly in elvish. The heavy title made him sick to his stomach. All those Shemlen looking to him. Pointing. Whispering behind their hands, still loud enough to hear. Instead of spiteful slander, they reverently murmured Herald, hero, savior.

And it was unnerving.

Days ago, he had been a spy, for Creators sake! He cursed again. How tides do change. He was carried away, a leaf on the wind, sand on a shore, by a town of Shems who believed him sent by their divine.

The Herald of Andraste.

Him, an Elvhen, suddenly revered by those who despised his people! They who would jump at the chance to enslave and slaughter them! Elvhen were worthless in their eyes, forced to wander, forced to hate shemlens. The ones who had but yesterday held him in chains, same as his ancestors before him, and cried for his blood, were the same ones that now came to him with prayers on their lips, to touch his hands, his face.

Trey paused in his labored hike up a snow covered mountainside and let the sharp air sting his nose. He was glad for the frigid wind whipping through his cloak, biting his skin and his lungs. It helped to counter the heated anger he felt at their hypocrisy.

Herald of Andraste? For them? Indeed! 

Trey closed his shocking green rimmed gold eyes and let the ice swirling around him consume him. It found every crack in his armor and siphoned all his body heat. He took a deep breath, shivering violently, but was at peace. 

Trey continued to climb higher as the air cooled and calmed his blood. It cleared his head of the rage that threatened to consume him. If he festered any longer, he may have considered leaving altogether. He may have considered a great many things, none of them pleasant.

At the top of the mountain, as the wind tugged at his auburn hair, it seemed he thought clearly at last. 

Looking back, he hadn't come very far for how much he had struggled, but he could see Haven over the sparse treetops. It laid bare for him—for anyone—to see, ragged and hastily thrown together to house the refugees it didn't know it could. The town was only crumbling stone and fresh timber, knit together by hope. 

Behind it, further up the mountain, the Rift swirled menacingly, reminding them that Haven was ironically far from safe. Its ghostly green glow tinted everything, down to the last snowflake. The Rift would always haunt them, threatening to reopen. 

Unless _he_ did something. 

Trey lifted his hand, marked, scorched from his encounter with the Rift. As he thought of it, the flickering green energy crackled to life, borne of the mark, dancing around his fingers like arcs of lightning but leaving no burns. He clenched his fist and the energy spluttered and died. 

The Herald of Andraste. 

No matter what he himself believed, the people of Haven called him the Herald. Everyone believed him to be chosen. The only one who could close the rifts, at the least, the chosen of their god, at the best. Him. A Dalish elf. 

It seemed preposterous to him that others would believe such things. That an Inquisition would believe. The very Inquisition that was a religious crusade founded on heresy and death but held together by hope. Hope for him. Hope from the people.

 _What people?_ he asked himself scathingly. _Have you already forgotten where you came from? Who really sent you?_

Who were his own people?

Instinct told him it was his clan, other Dalish. Vague memories of his mamae came to mind. She was constantly scolding him for the tricks he would play on all the other members of his clan. He recalled sitting with the other Elvhen children and listening to the long-winded, intricate stories of their ancestors. He remembered the wizened Keeper, shriveled and dried as a fruit in the sun, ancient as the mountains. The Keeper had always watched Trey. He marked his growth from an arrogant Da'len who's only concern was the next bout of mischief he could get into, to the clan's strongest warrior who used both his cunning and his abilities to fearlessly defend them.

Absentmindedly, Trey's fingers ghosted over the olive toned _valaslin_ where it curved over his high cheek. His forehead, his chin, his cheeks; the tattoo had been unexpectedly painful, but it marked him as a man of the clan. Honored, he was chosen by a patron god, protected by a Creator.

These were his people, weren't they?

Another memory forced itself into his mind. It was of grammatically awful elvish, tinged to near incomprehension by a heavy Antivan accent.

_"You speak elvish?" he asked, surprised._

_"You've just heard the extent of it," Josephine admitted, blushing furiously._

_Good natured laughter around the War Table._

Trey smiled in spite of himself.

_"It seems you hold the key to our salvation," Solas told Trey surprisingly matter-of-factly considering he had just used the mark on Trey's left hand to shut the rift spewing demons naught a minute ago. The world felt like it spun around Trey. The magnitude, the exhaustion, the confusion, it was getting to be too much—_

_"Good to know," piped a voice Trey had completely forgotten existed. He turned to take a better look at the stout dwarf to which the voice belonged. "And here I thought we'd be ass-deep in demons forever."_

_Reality snapped back into place. Trey found himself laughing at the grinning dwarf._

Trey beamed now and surveyed his snow-covered surroundings again. Mountains towered, Haven sat, the frozen lake glittered gorgeously, glinting blue, white and _green_.

_Solas slapped him on the back. Congratulating him with a relieved, if somewhat surprised smile. "Sealed. As before. You're becoming quite proficient at this."_

_The pressure on Trey's chest seemed to lift._

Wind swirled, blowing fiercely. Trey focused on the largest building in far-distant Haven: the Chantry looming over a town torn asunder.

_Trey blinked. He tried to focus on the heavy table in the center of the stifling room and not the crippling realization that he was still a prisoner and that he may not be able to return to his clan after all..._

_"This is the Divine's directive: rebuild the Inquisition of old. Find those who will stand against the chaos," Leliana fumed, drumming her fingers on the thick, ancient tome Cassandra had lay profoundly on the table. "We aren't ready. We have no leader, no numbers, and now no Chantry support."_

_"But we have no choice," Cassandra pressed, glaring stubbornly at Leliana. "We must act now." She turned to Trey with a determination he had rarely seen in another person. "With_ you _at our side."_

_Her words settled heavily over him, shaking him all the way to his bones. Joining the Inquisition was his only option; he saw that in her fierce eyes. The only way the Inquisition had any hope of success would be with his help; he saw that in the rigid set of her square jaw. He was the symbol they needed—_

The Herald of Andraste at the Inquisition's side.

These were his people now, he reasoned, and though he felt he could not be a herald for a god in whom he did not believe, he couldn't in good conscience disappoint those that stood so staunchly behind him. They were willing to support and protect him in exchange for a little blind faith. He owed them for that, at least. Perhaps he even owed them the grace of a little white lie.

If he was truly this Herald of Andraste, he could not let himself despise the people who looked to him. He could not callously use them no matter how much he wanted to; not even to better the affairs of his own people.

He had to work for them. For Thedas. His own selfishness had to be put aside because he gained the mark, just as it had to be when he gained his valaslin. He had to grow beyond himself. He had to thrive. He had to endure.

Trey took one last deep stinging breath and headed back down the mountain. He was thankful for the time alone to clear his head of the muddle his newfound fame had wrought. Now there was work to be done, meetings to be had.

 _Mala suledin nadas_ , he told himself firmly.

_Now, you must endure._


End file.
